G.Skill Ripjaws 4 3200MHz DDR4 memory Review

Conclusion

The G.Skill Ripjaws 4 is a product with a distinctly split personality.

The Memory sticks themselves, and their performance, are outstanding. The Ripjaws heatspreader is one of the prettiest around in our opinion. It matches nearly any motherboard you could put them in, and available in three colours you're guaranteed to find one to match your particular weapon of choice. 16GB capacity is enough for all but the most extreme applications and that combines beautifully with the 3200MHz speed to give extraordinary bandwidth. Well over 60GB/s, which is more than double that of a fast DDR3 Z97 setup. If memory bandwidth is what rocks your socks then they will be rocked harder than the front row at a Metallica concert.

Although the memory sticks themselves make up the majority of the cost of the Ripjaws 4 kit the fans do need covering too. The positives are obviously the looks. The combination of black and red, with white LEDs, suit our test system particularly well and we know that we aren't the only people to run a red and black motherboard in a system with white LEDs. Miraculously they aren't too loud either. This was the element that always crippled old memory coolers as tiny fans are loud ones, but the G.Skill offerings are no louder than any other part of our test rig. However, after a night of OCCT the sticks only reached 38°C so the fans are utterly useless. Or rather, utterly pointless. Memory just doesn't get hot enough to justify their usage. The decision to place the cables in the centre of the twin fans rather than on an end only adds to the misery of making your system look tidy.

So if you've got a lot of money to spend and a need for some blisteringly fast DDR4, you could do much worse than the G.Skill Ripjaws 4 and for that reason it wins our OC3D Performance Award. Just leave the fans in the box.

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